Some of you know that I love dogs and have far too many. Five live in our house, four between my husband and myself and one with my mom who also lives with us. This was never our intention, to have this many dogs. I started with one, then added one and then another and that was where it was supposed to stop. It held there for a while, at three; then my husband moved in and brought his dog. She wasn’t with us very long as she developed cancer and died. Then, around 2014, we “fostered” a couple of dogs who had been dumped and picked up by a neighbor; that made five. One of the original five, my McNab Rosie, died but we replaced her with my husband’s McNab, Buster.

The five dogs we currently have are, in order of age, Lucy, 15, a Jack Russell/Fox Terrier mix adopted by me from the Titus/Parrish family 14 years ago; Maggie, 14, a Chihuahua/Terrier cross adopted by my mom from the Yuba SPCA 12 years ago; sisters Chuck and Chica, 8, the dumpees mentioned above, who are also Chihuahua/Terrier crosses, and Buster, 5, the McNab also mentioned above.

For one reason or another, I have not had a lot of dogs grow old with me. My first dog that was all my own died at 10 from liver disease. My second dog was killed by another dog when she was about five. Rosie made it to about 12 when cancer took her. Now I have Lucy who at 15 is definitely a senior dog. With this comes the typical issues of aging - arthritis, hearing loss and a general slow down; she used to be able to hop as high as the counter tops, now she limps around the house with various age-related lumps and bumps. Lucy also suffers from some sort of kidney issues, so has to eat a special diet. She also has incontinence issues, so has to take a special medication for that. The hearing loss is probably the hardest on us - she loves to wander off and no amount of calling will bring her back. She can hear my high pitched whistle but has trouble determining what direction it is coming from, resulting in her running off in the opposite direction more often than not. Most of the time this is humorous, so long as there is no immediate danger, such as a car. Lucy is the deaf in my title.

The blind is poor Chica. I say poor Chica because she is only eight and yet suffers from a number of old dog issues. She has the equivalent of two torn ACL’s in both hind legs, arthritis in both hips, knees and in one ankle (that was at the last annual visit, she probably has it in the other one by now). Now, about a week ago, she suddenly went blind. We noticed that she was bumping into things but didn’t pay a lot of attention at first, then we started watching her and realized what was happening. In the past week we know she is nearly fully blind - she sees up close, within an inch of her eyes and perhaps makes out light differences but that’s about it. We have called Chica “Chica-boom” for a number of years because, well, baby has back and, as my husband says, “she makes the boom in the room, room, room!.” Now the nickname has another meaning - Boom! She bumps into a chair. Despite this, she has improved her ability to navigate the house in the past week as well. Though she does still bump into things, it’s not as often and she has also learned to be more cautious. Her eyes are wide open all the time, like she is trying to see something. It’s heartbreaking but at the same time, her bravery in getting on with life is inspiring. She doesn’t spend as much time outdoors, which makes sense - things change frequently there, but she is able to negotiate the stairs into and out of the house and can follow her sister, Chuck, with her ears.

It’s hard with aging dogs - we clean up a lot of messes. Part of this is that the two dumped dogs have never really been fully house trained. They do pretty good but not as good as the dogs we had from puppy-hood. But the older ones have more accidents and we just realized that Maggie is now incontinent also, so she will be going on the same medication as Lucy. We’ve eliminated most of the carpet in the house and door mats and other small rugs are gone. One accident on those and the not-so-house trained dogs will make that their new spot.

I figure we have another year, maybe two with Lucy. I suspect she is also developing Cushings Disease and the treatment for this is as bad as the disease, so I will let this alone until it’s not fair to Lucy. For her, it’s about quality and not quantity, especially at 15. Chica is the unknown. Her sister at the same age has none of her problems; I wonder if Chica will continue to decline and be gone in just a few more years. Time will tell. In the meantime, I will continue to be inspired by her bravery in the face of blindness and I’ll continue to chuckle as Lucy hears my whistle and runs in the opposite direction.

The blind and the deaf